Every year, San Francisco firefighters respond to emergency calls from a street alarm box system that was in use when horses still pulled the engines.

There's almost no part of the city that's more than two blocks away from one of the 2,040 antique red iron boxes that use telegraph technology, and almost all carrying the name of the city's defunct Department of Electricity. And in an age when cell phones and instant communications have spelled doom for the boxes in other major cities, San Francisco is happy with its link to the past.

"The perception is that the system is old and antiquated, but it's proven itself to be an important part of the redundancy that's built into our system," said Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White.

New York, which still has about 15,000 active call boxes, found out the need during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when cell phone lines were instantly overloaded, crashing the network along much of the East Coast.

San Francisco had its own communications disaster when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit in 1989, destroying cell towers and cutting power to parts of the city.

"The system works when others don't," said Jack Donohoe, public safety wire manager for the city's Department of Technology, which keeps both the fire boxes and the smaller police box system running. "When the earthquake hit, some of the boxes in the Marina were tilted like modern art, but the system worked perfectly."

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